A Letter For Places You Don't Want to Be

And what they teach you by being there

Have you ever been in a place where you know nobody wants to actually be? And I mean you REALLY don’t want to be there. The type of place that is a complete waste of time or it’s for something that adds no value or the reason for being there has greater implications that are not good for you.

There’s prison, the DMV, and anywhere that the fluorescent light feels like part of the punishment.

You usually know it’s one of those types of places by the feeling you get even before having to go there. The knotted ball of yuck right below your rib cage forms when you look at your calendar and see that place is on your destination list. The ball of yuck grows and tightens (somehow both) the closer you get.

When you step into your car and type it into your Google Maps and it gives you an exact ETA you feel the wave of nausea flow over your whole body. That’s when you know it’s one of those places.

This is the thought I had today while waiting outside clinic 3A (Sarcoma Clinic) at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. I don’t really get those same feelings anymore, it’s been 8 years of coming here regularly and almost 12 years of managing the tumors in my right ankle. It’s become a place that’s normal for me, although that may be part of the punishment, the normalcy. That feeling is still palpable and accessible to me, though. Especially because I can sense when other people have that feeling.

Bricks outside The Huntsman Institute honoring the memories of lives and charitable gifts.

This time what triggered it was the teenage girl, black baggy jeans and oversized hoodie on, sitting with her dad. You don’t see a lot of kids here. She was fidgeting, her eyes darting around the room, her posture sunken and shoulders curled over. She was scared. So was her dad, who sat there with his head turned to the right staring blankly out the big window overlooking the campus and downtown Salt Lake City.

That’s when it hit me and my memories of feeling that way came flooding back into my consciousness.

Nobody actually wants to be here.

I can’t think of any scenario where one would want to find themselves in this place. You’re here because either you or someone you love needs to be here. And that “needs to be here” bit means you or the loved one has or is suspected of having cancer.

Even the people that work here, the doctors and nurses and admins and techs and janitors, they don’t actually want to be here either because this place that they go to work at they wish didn’t have to exist at all.

Every single day people walk in here and experience one of the worst days of their life.

Sure, some joy gets sprinkled in if you get to come here one day and get some good news, but the fact remains even those people don’t want to be in that position to get that news in the first place.

For some reason they also brand the heck out of this place with “Cancer”. You’re reminded at every turn leading into the building and while in the building what it’s about. Cancer is in the name. Cancer is on all the plaques and signage, everything is labeled and branded by cancer here. It just gets slapped in your face when you already know why you’re here.

As with all things there are levels to this. Things behind things behind things. Places within places within places.

There are places within this place that you really don’t want to be or find yourself in. If someone gets on the elevator with you and hits the 4 button on the control panel, it’s no bueno, that’s inpatient treatment. Level 5 is even worse, intensive care and the chapel/meditation room is there. I learned this mostly by observation. I’d walk in the elevator and see people’s faces, observe their posture and notice their oxygen tanks and colorful knit hats on their heads.

Sometimes I just ask people while we are there in the moment together. After they hit their number I’m just so curious I can’t help it, mainly because I always feel like an imposter here and want to know what the full cancer experience is like. It’s perverse, I know. I don’t really want that because the full experience is the worst possible experience - it’s horrible suffering and death. It means generational trauma and fear, spread out across many people and timelines connected to that. It’s so fucking grim it’s hard to put your mind in THAT place.

I’ve had moments here where I can’t help it and my mind travels to THAT place. It’s the moments when people are outside on the 5th level courtyard crying and saying their last goodbyes to loved ones. Or in a chair next to someone in the lab who’s struggling under the weight of the consequences of what that blood is going to mean once it gets processed and the results are in. Or the family member in the cafeteria who’s exhausted and at their limit and you can tell by how they are slouched over their tray in the back corner booth avoiding everyone else and eating at a pace that’s 1/3 their normal pace.

Just yesterday there was a nurse in one of the circular booths laying down on her side, knees tucked up to her chest forming a curve with the booth, Kleenex clutched between her hands, eyes red and swollen. My mind goes to whatever moment preceded that moment. I don’t know the actual reality of that moment for that person, I couldn’t possibly, but I can imagine it, viscerally. I can feel it in my body.

Once when I went to eat in the cafeteria and the general mood up there was solemn I had this dream/vision that the Grim reaper was just hanging out there, working the room like a salesman. It went like this:

THE GRIM REAPER IN THE CAFETERIA

FADE IN:

HUNTSMAN CANCER INSTITUTE - 6TH FLOOR CAFETERIA - DAY TIME

A nice hospital cafeteria with big windows looking out to the Wasatch mountains. Patients in various stages of treatment sit with their caregivers at scattered tables. Nurses and doctors roll in and out between appointments The hum of quiet conversation.

ANDREW sits at a table near the center.

The double doors swing open. THE GRIM REAPER enters with an unmistakable swagger — black robes flowing, scythe casually slung over one shoulder like a golf club. He moves through the room with the energy of a pharmaceutical sales rep working a conference center.

REAPER
(finger guns at a woman near the entrance)
Hey Susan!

SUSAN forces a tight smile, looks away.

REAPER (CONT’D)
(approaching a stoic man, hand raised for a high-five)
What’s up Jim?

JIM doesn’t move. His eyes track the Reaper with cold contempt as he passes. The high-five hangs in the air, unmet.

The Reaper spots DR. RYAN, a surgeon, getting coffee. He gives an exaggerated head nod, projecting his voice so the whole room can hear.

REAPER (CONT’D)
Don’t mess up and send one of these fine folks to me, Dr. Ryan!

Dr. Ryan ignores him. The Reaper moves on, unbothered.

He approaches Andrew’s table, extends his fist for a dap.

REAPER (CONT’D)
Andrew, not you yet dawg, but watch for me!
(winks)
You never know!

ANDREW
Fuck you, Reaper.

The Reaper grins, keeps moving. He spots KATHY, mid-50s, clearly in treatment, picking at a salad.

REAPER
(too cheerful)
Kathy! How’s that chemo treatin’ ya?

In a corner booth, a CAREGIVER — exhausted, protective — groans to his LOVED ONE.

CAREGIVER
(under his breath)
Not this fucking guy again...

Something snaps. The Caregiver stands, voice rising, anger spilling out

CAREGIVER (CONT’D)
Reaper, Why you gotta come up here like this?

REAPER
(hands up, mock-innocent)
Hey hey, come on now. I like you guys!
(beat)
Remember, I don’t wanna see you either. I don’t like this shit.

He gestures around the room.

REAPER (CONT’D)
But you gotta be real, You know damn well where you’re at.

CAREGIVER
(shouting)
Shut the fuck up and get outta here! We don’t want your ass around!

REAPER
(motioning downward with both hands, trying to calm the room)
Everyone calm down.

He pauses. Looks around at the faces watching him. When he speaks again, his tone shifts — still casual, but with an edge of cold truth.

REAPER (CONT’D)
This is the cafeteria of an elite cancer hospital.

Beat.

REAPER (CONT’D)
You know what this is. You know where you are.
(matter-of-fact)
I have to be here. You all are my ICP (ideal customer profile)

He spreads his arms wide.

REAPER (CONT’D)
This is where I make my money.
(pointed)
Don’t rob me of that. You’re fucking with my livelihood if you tryna kick me outta here.

Andrew stands. Chairs scrape. He squares up with the Reaper, face to face.

ANDREW
Just wait till the AI solves this cancer shit, Reap.

He steps closer.

ANDREW (CONT’D)
This place will be fucking bankrupt and you’ll need to find another place to hang out on Tuesdays

Beat.

ANDREW (CONT’D)
…BITCH.

The Reaper holds Andrew’s gaze. For the first time, something flickers behind those empty sockets. Uncertainty? Fear?

The cafeteria watches in silence.

SMASH CUT TO BLACK.

THE END

That flicker behind the Reaper’s empty sockets - that’s the part I keep coming back to. Not the bravado, not the “fuck you” moment, satisfying as it is to imagine. The uncertainty. Because the Reaper works that room like a salesman for the same reason salesmen work any room: he doesn’t actually feel anything for the people in it. They’re transactions. He breezes through, cracks his jokes, moves on. He has to. Feeling it would destroy him.

I don’t get to breeze through. Twelve years and counting. I sit in those rooms, I get the IV ports and chemicals in my blood, I lay in the MRI machine, I take my meds and watch my skin and hair deteriorate. I ride those elevators, I eat in that cafeteria, I pray in that prayer room and sometimes even I get asked why I’m there.

And somewhere along the way the thing I dreaded most about this place became the thing it gave me. The proximity did something. The regularity of it — appointment after appointment, waiting room after waiting room — wore down whatever barrier I had between my experience and everyone else’s. I didn’t choose that. It just happened, the way a stone in a river doesn’t choose to become smooth.

I can feel that nurse curled up in the booth. I can feel the dad staring out the window because looking at his daughter right now would break something he can’t afford to break yet. I can feel the caregiver slouched over their tray in the back corner, eating slow, trying to disappear, wishing they were anywhere but here. Not because I’m special. Because I’ve been forced to be in the place with it, over and over, until the walls between me and them got thin enough to see through.

That’s what the Reaper will never understand. The places you don’t want to be are the places that teach you how to be. And that, somehow, is the thing I’m most grateful for from a place I never wanted to be.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew